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Investigate fraud more efficiently – how to apply a triage system

Published: Monday November 09, 2015

Retailers face a massive issue in the rise of web-based fraud. Online sales are predicted to reach £62.7 billion in the UK in 2020 and the sheer volume of transactions makes it difficult for retailers to decide quickly which transactions warrant investigation and which don’t. The more that goes unchecked, the greater the potential loss; but conversely, the more laborious the checking process, the greater the frustration to those genuinely good customers who find their transactions halted for investigation.

What’s needed is a layered approach to fraud management similar to the triage system used in our hospital casualty departments – in other words, assessing and making judgements on the seriousness of cases so as to give each of them the attention it deserves. It needs to be thorough but seamless, making customer interactions smooth and hassle-free while also working rigorously in the background to identify and mitigate against risks on a case-by-case basis.

Using this approach, retailers can streamline fraud investigation by focussing resource on the more complex cases and automating simple ones. They can:

Approve more transactions in real time, reducing the need for manual intervention

Check against fraud data shared by and with other retailers to ensure they are alerted to any potential fraudsters who may already have been active elsewhere

Handle exceptions really efficiently. When a customer or transaction is flagged, retailers need to have access to added intelligence that allows them to make an informed decision on what is a fraud and what is not. This not only identifies cases of fraud more quickly but exonerates genuine customers promptly. Needless to say, it also frees up team members to focus on other cases, increasing overall throughput

Reduce the number of false positives when investigating potential instances of fraud

Could you benefit from a multi-layered approach to retail fraud investigation? Find out more about tackling investigations more efficiently in our white paper here.